


The Angel At The Center of Dean's Heart

by addicted_2_manga



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel/Dean Winchester Feels, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 06:06:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30118293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addicted_2_manga/pseuds/addicted_2_manga
Summary: I wrote this for a club. We were tasked with introducing our first ever fandom through the art of fan fiction.  And so, I came up with this mess- Dean realizing his feelings for Castiel, thanks to the Fandom.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Kudos: 14





	The Angel At The Center of Dean's Heart

Dean was having a rather tedious, horribly timed crisis. He suddenly found himself lying awake at night, for reasons other than the looming Apocalypse. Even if he did manage to drop off the cliff of consciousness, he always found himself startling awake soon after. Always with one simple word pushing itself past his lips in a gravelly murmur. Not even a word, but rather, a name.

Cas.

It seemed to Dean that one day he had just happened to look over at his friend, and just happened to realise that things would never be the same between them. Ever since that moment, Dean couldn’t help but react. Every rare, fleeting smile he caught on that angelic face made Dean catch his breath. Every time Castiel spoke his name, and looked at him with those deep, penetrating eyes, Dean’s knees weakened a little. This went on for weeks, seemingly unnoticed, to Dean’s great relief. It still ran his mind ragged, with the way it kept him up nights, and made him question everything he thought he knew about himself.

It may have seemed to the older Winchester that this had all happened in the blink of an eye, but if he were more thorough in his introspection, he’d have noticed the patterns forming. He would have realised that this change of heart had taken weeks. There was one thing, however, that he knew with absolute certainty.

It was all the Fandom's fault.

**-x-x-x-x- Several Weeks Prior -x-x-x-x-**

The corners of Dean’s mouth turned up in conceited amusement as his eyes scanned the computer screen. “There are Sam girls and Dean girls, and…” His smile faltered as confusion stole across his face. “What’s a slash fan?” He cocked his head to throw his gaze over towards Sam.

The younger Winchester clenched his jaw a moment before answering in annoyance. “As in… Sam-slash-Dean.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Together.”

Dean blinked repeatedly and stared at Sam, reading the man’s expression carefully. He wasn’t entirely sure he’d heard right. “Like… “together” together?”

Sam shuddered. “Yeah…”

Dean looked back to the laptop as if it were toxic waste. “They do know we’re brothers, right?” He was almost too ashamed to meet his brother’s gaze again.

“Doesn’t seem to matter…” Sam looked off to the side, eager to be done with the conversation.

“Aww, c’mon. That…” Dean shut the laptop with a disgusted shake of his head. “That’s just sick.”

**-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-**

To say that the discovery of the Fandom and their seemingly endless catalogue of slash fiction hadn’t been the most shocking part of an already earth-shattering revelation would be the lie of the century. For his part, Dean had felt ill for days after, thanks to the Wincest tag. There was yet another questionable tag he had come across; but this one he had been wholly incapable of avoiding, no matter how desperately he had tried to push the thought out of his mind.

Destiel.

In those weeks after their dramatic introduction to the prophet Chuck, Dean never could figure out what disturbed him more- the existence of Destiel fiction, or the fact that he had not honestly been all that disturbed. If anything, Dean had been curious.

So curious that, after days of agonising over it, he had taken a couple shots for courage, and searched for “Destiel” on Archive of Our Own.

It had only taken him a few fan fictions before he came to find an eternal gratitude for the rating and tag system. He had kept himself firmly tethered to the General Audiences rating at first, but soon ran out of innocent stories featuring himself and his holy tax accountant. His first venture beyond the safety of “General Audiences” had been a definite miss. He had felt truthfully offended that there would be so many people so eager to write him and his loved ones in such heart-wrenching situations. “If you’re gonna write us,” he had thought aloud, “you chuckleheads could at least let us have something good for once.”

After only a week of these secret late-night internet searches, he had fallen into the habit of looking specifically for the “fluff” tag. He found he had an undeniable preference for the stories with all the embarrassingly clichéd romance tropes and anything in which he and Castiel enjoyed a lot of physical intimacy without falling into the throes of passion. The most remarkable thing to Dean had not been that he was reading himself spooning and sweet-talking another man. The most remarkable thing, for Dean, had been that he felt slightly jealous. It had occurred to him, after a while, that he was not even registering that this fictional Dean was in love with another man. The thought that had seized his mind with a vice-like grip was that his fictional counterpart was with Castiel, and that thought made him break out in a terrible rash of envy.

Once Dean had arrived at that conclusion, it was a breathtaking tumble down a steep hill. He had to wonder why he had not been disgusted by the thought of the Destiel ship, why all the fluff he read made his head feel fuzzy from the rush of endorphins. Most of all, Dean had to wonder how all these fans had seemed to nail his thoughts and feelings exactly. How did they know that one smile from the overly serious angel made him feel happier than a lifetime’s worth of praise from his father? How had they figured out that he could never say “no” to those big, earnest blue eyes; and exactly when did they figure out that he felt saddest whenever Castiel vanished without a word? At the end of each day, as he lay in the hotel bed, staring blankly up at the ceiling , Dean found himself asking the same question.

_‘Why did I need to read fan fiction to notice all of these things about myself?’_

It was no time at all before Dean’s curiosity began to grow, and he had begun wanting to test the waters of the “Mature” rated stories. He just had to know. He needed to see how he would react to reading himself in bed with the best friend he had ever known. He had not wanted to waste his time, or read anymore than he had to- just in case he ended the story with a disgusted sneer and an urge to vomit. When he had come across a story entitled “Dean Gets Some Angel Stick”, he could only shake his head, give his cheeks a couple of slaps and brace himself as he thought _‘this is the one’_.

All Dean had been able to say at the end of the story, as he glanced down into his own lap, was “Son of a bitch”.

**Author's Note:**

> This story includes dialog taken straight from the Season 4 Episode “The Monster At The End Of This Book”. I totally alluded to my original Destiel fic here. *laughs* It was written for my BFF, who demanded Destiel smut. It is in no way a serious story. Hence the ridiculous name… > .>


End file.
